Junko Mori facts for kids
Junko Mori (森 順子, Mori Junko) (born 1974) is a talented artist from Japan. She lives and works in Wales. Junko Mori is famous for her amazing metal sculptures. Her art often looks like living things, especially plants. She uses different metals, from shiny silver to strong mild steel. Her sculptures can be small enough for a table or very large. Junko Mori mixes her training from Japan and the UK to create unique art. People say she is "one of the most innovative and exciting Japanese metal artists working today." Her art is shown all over the world. You can find her work in famous places like the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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Junko Mori's Early Life and School
Junko Mori was born in 1974 in Yokohama, Japan. Her mom was a school nurse, and her dad was an engineer. He designed video recording devices. Junko says both her parents influenced her a lot. Her mom's love for nature made her interested in botany (the study of plants). She also often helped her dad fix things around the house.
Junko Mori loved making things from a very young age. She was always looking for tools and art supplies. When she was eight, she even asked Santa for a jigsaw!
Junko wasn't very interested in regular school subjects. Her passion for art continued through high school. This led her to Musashino Art University in Tokyo. She earned her first degree there in 1997. She studied Industrial, Interior, and Craft Design, focusing on metalwork.
After university, Junko felt her art didn't quite fit into either fine art or industrial art in Japan. So, she took a break from studying. She spent a year learning more about welding.
Later, one of her old professors told her about a silversmith who studied in London. Even though Junko didn't speak English, she was excited about the metalworking course there. She found the way art was taught in the UK very different from Japan. She felt it helped her focus more on the process of making art.
She earned another degree in Silversmithing and Metalworking in 2000. This was from Camberwell College of Arts in London. After that, she was an artist-in-residence at Liverpool Hope University for two years. In 2005, she was chosen as one of eight top metalworkers for a special art award.
How Junko Mori Creates Her Art
Junko Mori makes amazing sculptures from steel or silver. She shapes the metal by hand. When she first started, metal was the hardest material for her to work with. But this challenge made her want to keep trying. Now, after many years, her pieces show how flexible metal can be. They often look as lively as the plants that inspire them.
Junko usually doesn't plan each sculpture in detail beforehand. Her art takes shape as she works. However, she does make drawings and sketches. These help her get ideas flowing. But the final sculptures almost never look exactly like her drawings.
On her website, she has a "Research" page with many of these drawings. They include simple plant drawings and colorful, dream-like pictures of plants. Junko compares drawing to "jogging" before a big run. Drawing helps her mind warm up and get ready to work on her 3D sculptures.
Once she starts working with metal, Junko says the repeated actions can make her lose track of time. She feels like "the artwork tells her when it is finished." At some point, she steps back and knows the piece is complete.
Junko Mori loves how many small pieces can come together to make a big impact. She says, "I find infinite possibilities of the form multiplied by the vital power beyond the physical space, such as cell division through a microscope." This means she sees how tiny parts, like cells dividing, can create something huge and powerful.
Each small part of her sculptures might look similar. But because she works with metal by hand, there are tiny differences. These small changes make the whole sculpture even more complex. Junko calls these differences "repeating little accidents, like the mutation of cells." She believes the final art piece grows and changes as she works. She says, "The uncontrollable beauty is the core of my concept."
Where to See Junko Mori's Art
Junko Mori's beautiful sculptures are in many public collections around the world. Some of these places include:
- The British Museum in London
- The Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii
- The Victoria and Albert Museum in London
- The Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide
- Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in the UK
- Manchester Art Gallery in the UK
- Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg in Germany
- The National Museum Cardiff in Wales
- The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh
- National Museums Liverpool in the UK
- The Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland
Junko Mori's Personal Life
Junko Mori met her husband, who is a woodworker, at an art event in Manchester. Her first art studio was also in Manchester. But they needed more space for their work. Junko used to visit Wales for surfing and bodyboarding. She loved Wales because it had the sea, beaches, and mountains. These things, plus affordable homes, made them decide to buy a house there.
Junko's metalworking studio used to be a pig shed! Her husband's woodworking studio was once an old horse shed. They have two children.
Awards and Achievements
Junko Mori has received many awards for her amazing work:
- 2001 - NEXT MOVE, Artist Residency at Liverpool Hope University
- 2002 - Gold Medal, Bavarian State Award at TALANTE in Munich, Germany
- 2003 - Crafts Council Business Development Award
- 2005 - Shortlisted for the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize: Metal
- 2009 - Second Prize, Schoonhoven Silver Award in The Netherlands
- 2019 - Finalist, Loewe Craft Prize, Design Museum, London
Selected Exhibitions
Junko Mori's art has been shown in many exhibitions. Here are some of them:
Solo Exhibitions
These are shows where only Junko Mori's art was displayed:
- 2005 - Junko Mori, 21st Century Showcase, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
- 2006 - Junko Mori, Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool
- 2013 - Junko Mori: Coppiced Wood, The Holburne Museum, Bath
- 2018 - Collect: Visiting Nature Junko Mori Metalwork, JamFactory, Adelaide, Australia
Group Exhibitions
These are shows where Junko Mori's art was displayed with other artists' work:
- 2005 - Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2005: Metal, Crafts Council, London & UK tour
- 2009 - Can Art Save Us?, Museums Sheffield; Millennium Gallery, Sheffield
- 2014 - Out of Sight: Drawing in the Lives of Makers, Contemporary Applied Arts, London
- 2017 - The International Hokuriku Kogei Summit – Worlds Kogei, Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, Toyama, Japan
- 2022 - Japanese Contemporary Design, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
